Hello All,
I’ve been enjoying taking a deep dive down the many, many rabbit holes of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in an endeavour to answer the question of whether NFTs could present a sustainable funding solution for open education, along with freely distributed cultural storytelling.
Join me in what I suspect is just a beginning of this journey for me, in which I share my findings from discussions with creators of NFTs, attending NFTcon, sticking my big toe into the pool of NFT Discourse communities, searching a little too deeply on Open Sea, tuning into podcasts and webinars, chatting in Web 3.0 forums, and of course immersing myself in articles. You can find what I suspect will be the first of many articles on NFTs here, as I get set to conduct my own experiments: https://storytogo.ca/2021/10/nft-non-fungible-tokens-a-sustainable-funding-solution-for-open-education-and-open-culture/
Hi Erica,
I enjoyed learning about NFTs, I know very little about this new digital market. It is interesting that the value placed on the tokens can support artists and their artistic ventures. However, I particularly liked the reference to open education and culture projects. I reflected on whether tokens can be applied in collaborative initiatives with students. The Studyum YouTube video highlighted great points for integrating NFTs into education. However, I wondered about NFTs and collaborative learning. You discussed copyright concerns, and I thought about CC licenses. After all, it is a digital image that an artist created; as the following article discusses, it is problematic if an artist makes their work public (CC licensed) though minted for NFT. The author states there is no contradiction with multiple copies of an NFT made publicly though portrayed as a limited edition: https://creativecommons.org/2021/05/04/at-the-intersection-of-nfts-and-creative-commons-licenses/ But, I disagree with that viewpoint as NFTs are new forms of art. I acknowledge that all the metadata is in the original; however, the image attracts the human eye. Furthermore, in my opinion, allowing CC licenses for NFTs devalues this form of art. What do you think?
Excellent work!!!
Hi Anna,
Thanks for the link to the article.
Yeah, it took me a bit to wrap my head around what ‘unique’ actually means in terms of NFTs, as it is not how I’d define unique, but is much better as far as a creator is concerned in the NFT marketplace. Unique in the NFT marketplace essentially is tied to the data attached to that piece of minted NFT, so it doesn’t need to be the original or the only print, rather you can sell many of the same print, and still utilise a version of that print elsewhere yourself as the creator (provided you did not include the copyright to the piece in the NFT’s smart contract. What makes something unique as an NFT is the data which is ultimately acknowledging which print number it is. In terms of who has the rights to mint something, that falls to who the creator is or what the permissions are that the creator has bestowed on the person minting the piece with regards to the piece.
So could a creator list their piece as both CC and mint a copy of it as an NFT? Absolutely. Will this undervalue it as an NFT? Possibly, but possibly not, as many NFTs have more than one use, like being keys that unlock other experiences and as many NFTs are not one of a kind, but rather one copy of.
Given that thought, uses, and experiments around NFTs are rapidly evolving, there is also a lot of opportunity here to begin to help shape their direction.
In term of uses of NFTs in the classroom, EdSurge did a podcast of that, that you can find here: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-08-10-could-nfts-play-a-role-in-education
Thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts on.
Erica